Elon Musk is no longer the richest person in the world
Elon Musk is no longer the richest person in the world after being overtaken – yet again – by French billionaire Bernard Arnault.
On Tuesday, wealth reported that Arnault – founder of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH – had been overtaken in the rankings by Musk, whose net worth was boosted by the big rally in Tesla shares.
However, shares of the world’s most valuable automaker — to which much of Musk’s fortune is tied — plunged more than 5% on Wednesday after dealers were disappointed by Tesla’s Investor Day 2023.
Accordingly BloombergMusk’s Billionaires Index, which tracks the real-time wealth of the world’s richest people, lost more than $1.9 billion on Wednesday — causing him to slip to second place behind the LVMH chief.
Arnault’s fortune, meanwhile, rose by around $2 billion after a €1.5 billion ($1.6 billion) share buyback sent the company’s shares skyrocketing and cemented its status as Europe’s most valuable company.
However, Paris-listed LVMH shares traded about 1% lower during European trading hours on Thursday.
Bloomberg puts Arnault and Musk’s net worth at $186 billion and $184 billion, respectively.
A separate wealth ranking from forbes also estimates that Arnault’s wealth has once again surpassed Musk’s.
The forbes Tracker that uses a slightly different methodology than Bloombergestimates Arnault’s net worth at $205 billion and Musk’s at $194 billion.
Arnault, who serves as LVMH’s chairman and CEO, controls about half of the luxury goods giant. In 1989 he became the majority shareholder.
Meanwhile, Musk saw his wealth boosted by the meteoric rise in the value of Tesla shares, which are up more than 4,000% in the decade since it went public. According to CNBC, he also owns more than 40% of the existing shares in SpaceX, which was reportedly privately valued at $137 billion last month.
Though Musk remains one of the richest people in the world, his wealth has plummeted due to his Twitter acquisition and a series of troubles at Tesla, including declining sales. end of 2021, forbes called him the richest person in history with a net worth of nearly $300 billion.
The narrow and fluctuating wealth gap between the two men has seen them swap places in the world’s richest people rankings several times over the past year.
In late 2022, Arnault overtook Musk to become the world’s richest person as Tesla stock suffered a major sell-off following Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter. Just a week earlier, he had briefly overtaken Musk.
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